SHORT PAPERS 



DR. FRANK K. CAMERON, of the United States Department of Agriculture, 

 presented a paper on "The Application of Physical Chemistry to Agricultural 

 Chemistry," in which he stated that there was some difficulty in approaching this 

 subject, for the reason that what constitutes agricultural chemistry cannot be 

 clearly defined, and the boundary lines between it and other branches of applied 

 chemistry are not always evident. Much of biological chemistry and much of geo- 

 logical chemistry along lines on which notable achievements have been made by 

 the applications of the principles and methods which in recent years have come 

 to be called physical chemistry, could with propriety be claimed also for agricul- 

 tural chemistry. One finds agricultural chemists engaged in the examination of 

 drugs, fertilizers, leathers, and tannins, etc., as well as in the examination of foods 

 or soils. Important applications of physical chemistry are to be found along many 

 of these lines which might be claimed for the agricultural chemist, but disputed as 

 belonging to the field of the industrial chemist or others. The manufacture of 

 nitric acid by electrochemical methods, while a problem of industrial chemistry, is 

 important mainly because of the use of nitrates in agriculture. But confining one's 

 self strictly to the work professedly done in the immediate interest of agriculture 

 or farm practices, there is much evidence to be found of the increasing influence 

 of physical chemistry. 



A valuable and interesting paper followed on the close relation and applications 

 of physical chemistry to the science of agriculture, and the speaker concluded by 

 saying that " The problems presented by agricultural chemistry do not commend 

 themselves to the investigator who is interested in chemistry alone for its own 

 sake. They are generally complex and not well suited to the elucidation or illus- 

 tration of hypotheses in pure chemistry. The pecuniary rewards which agricul- 

 tural chemistry offers are not sufficient in comparison with other fields to tempt 

 the man trained in physical chemistry who wishes to use his equipment to this 

 end. But to the man who has the training and who cares not so much that his 

 problems be pure science as that they may be undertaken in a scientific spirit and 

 with scientific methods, the application of physical chemistry to agriculture offers 

 many opportunities. He can have the satisfaction of not only doing good scientific 

 work but directly helping an industry of ultimate importance to all his race and of 

 immediate importance to the numerically largest class of the race." 



PROFESSOR HENRY SNYDER, of the University of Minnesota, read a paper on 

 "The Digestibility of Bread." 



PROFESSOR Louis KAHLENBERG, of the University of Wisconsin, read a paper 

 "On the Relation between the Processes of Solution, Chemical Action, and 

 Osmosis." 



